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2022: A Year of Thriving or Merely Surviving
January 2022. Another month, another year rolls around. I’m not one who typically makes New Year’s resolutions. They’re too easy to break. If I resolve anything, it’s to get back on track. I’ve let some important habits slip during our big move this summer and their absence is dragging me down. It’s time to make…
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Advent: A Time of Waiting and Expectation
Life is full of waiting. Whether standing in line or holding in a phone queue, waiting wears on our nerves. We’re ready to move on to the next phase, thinking somehow it will be better. What if we flipped a time of waiting on its head into a period of expectation instead? “But if we…
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A Gift of Wholehearted Hospitality
This time of year, I find it easy to buy gifts for some people and more difficult for others. Can you relate? What do you give that person who already has everything? Or, what if you’re short on cash but want to offer gifts anyway? I challenge you to shift your mind to think about…
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Brain Science: The Renewing of Your Mind
Brain science blows my mind! I don’t say this because I’m a doctor and human biology is my passion. But recent advances in this field, have totally changed our concept of what’s possible for our brain. This amazes me. Back when I was in medical school (long, long ago), we thought the brain was basically…
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Nostalgia: A Longing for Home
The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing-to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from-my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like…
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Experiencing Joy Within the Sorrow
I feel caught up in a bittersweet sentiment that’s both pleasant and painful. This week we celebrate the arrival of a new member of our family as my niece delivered a beautiful baby boy. But I experience this joy within the sorrow of loss. My sister’s not here to celebrate with us. Grief returns as…
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An Everyday Sort of Magic
I do believe in an everyday sort of magic–the inexplicable connection we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art, and the like; the eerie appropriateness of synchronicity; the whispered voice, the hidden presence when we think we’re alone. Charles de Lint There’s an everyday sort of magic only children understand where discarded cardboard boxes…
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Flying Against the Wind
When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it. Henry Ford Aviation is an integral part of my life. Some might say I inherited a passion for flying. But in reality, I was exposed at an early age to airplanes and never stopped being…
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Living Light: Lessons Learned in a Tiny House
Living light makes sense everyday. Never forget, the world as we know it is not permanent but only our temporary home. Over the summer, an opportunity arose to sell our house and purchase a farm in the mountains. But I wasn’t ready to leave my job in Indiana just yet. So, now Tim and I…
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Surprised By Kindness
When all our best laid plans go awry, I never cease to be surprised by kindness scattered along the way. Earlier this summer, Tim and I promised to help my daughter and her husband move to the farm we purchased in the mountains of Tennessee. The plan was for them to live there while looking…
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Embracing My Gardener’s Heart
Gardening is my passion and joy. Yes, I know I’ve spent my adult life practicing medicine. But I love digging in soil cultivating beauty in my own little plot of earth. When we sold our home, I gave up my flower beds and my vegetable garden in mid season. My gardener’s heart is still in…
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Uprooted or Transplanted: A Matter of Perspective
My world is more than chaotic right now. The whirlwind move from our home of sixteen years, left me torn from all that was familiar and comforting. Up to this point, any semblance of normal evades me. Yes, it was our choice to sell our place, but who knew how difficult the process would turn…
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If Walls Could Speak…
If walls could speak…they would tell tales of children’s laughter and rowdy game nights… of furry friends catnapping in a sunbeam… or of the smell of fresh baked bread cooling in the kitchen. When all the bookshelves lay empty, memories of cozy reads by the fire haunt now silent spaces. Busy butterflies flit over blossoms……
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Abiding in a Bubble of Love
At a recent Christian writers conference, one of the speakers made a statement that touched my heart . It wasn’t at all about the craft of writing but about who we are as followers of Jesus. She said, “Remember (as Christians) we have a bubble of love surrounding us at all times.” Her words struck…
